“Mirror, mirror”: Are we attracted to a partner who is similar to self or family?Catriona Bell

Have you ever looked at your partner and thought that they were your parent’s double, in their traits and mannerisms or their height, nose, hair or eyes (e.g. google Melania Trump's father and see if you think he resembles Donald)? Given that we resemble our parents, there may be a subtle hint of narcissism or something slightly ‘Freudian’ going on when we pick a romantic partner – so what does the research have to say on this?

In general, the idea of incest between relatives, across many cultures, raises various negative emotions and is a cultural taboo – even in cultures, for example, where non-genetic siblings are raised together as part of a family, the idea of sexual attraction between adoptive siblings is considered aversive. Strong negative reactions toward the idea of incest make sense in evolutionary terms, given that passing on similar sets of genes to offspring is risky for their health. But how does this play out in our initial attraction toward some people over others?

It seems that sharing subtle similarity in the face with someone you see across the bar might lead to trust, but not love, at first sight. When participants in the laboratory are asked to rate pairs of faces where one face is similar (in shape) to yourself and the other resembles a control participant of similar age, participants rate the self-resembling face as more trustworthy but tend either to view the resembling face as less-attractive than the other resembling face or judge little difference in attractiveness between the two.

So was there any truth to Freud’s historical claims about attraction to traits in a partner that remind you of your opposite-sex parent? How might we reconcile this with the saying that ‘birds of a feather flock together’? The scientific evidence ironically might come from birds. Here, ‘not too much but not too little’ might be an appropriate way to view mating based on genetic similarity. Species want (unconsciously) to avoid inbreeding with genetically-similar members of the same species but also want to increase the probability of passing down any of their ‘good genes’ to the next generation. Accordingly, there appears to be some evidence for similarity between your romantic partner and opposite-sex parent, when we look at physical traits like eye and hair colour.

However, as we all come with different sets of parents and prior experiences while growing up, these experiences may shape whether or not birds of a feather end up ‘flocking together’. When women are asked to judge how attractive they find a face that resembles them, their childhood closeness to their father, but not their mother, predicts how strongly they are attracted to men who share some facial resemblance with the female participants. Women who were close to their father when growing up, find a stronger appeal in male faces that share resemblance with self than women whose fathers were more emotionally distant.

So, it appears that when we make a decision about a stranger’s attractiveness we refer to a ‘mental template’ of their resemblance to family, and depending on our past experiences, this might guide our initial reflections on them as a possible love interest. Flicking through your photos of your current or ex-partner might reveal common traits that attracted you to them in the first place – is the answer closer to home than you think?